The July 27 CounterSpin noted the passing of one of media criticism’s greatest writers:
Alexander Cockburn with his niece Laura Flanders.
FAIR was saddened to hear of the death of radical journalist Alexander Cockburn. He was one of the writers to whom FAIR is most indebted, inspiring a revival of hard-hitting political media criticism with the Press Clips column in the Village Voice, which he launched in 1973, and then with Beat the Devil in The Nation, starting in 1983.
Part of his appeal was simply how well he wrote: He had a voice that could not be imitated—effortlessly stylish, boundlessly informed, savagely funny and unapologetically left.
As fun as he made it look, Cockburn demonstrated that a ruthless debunking of the factual distortions and ideological obfuscations of the establishment press was a vital part of any realistic project for political and social change. In particular, his dismantling of how the New York Times peddled right-wing fantasies about Central America and facilitated the Reagan-era bloodbath in the region was an early model for our work (and that of others).
FAIR had personal connections to Alex as well: He was the beloved uncle of Laura Flanders, the founding co-host of CounterSpin; Extra!‘s editor Jim Naureckas was his intern at The Nation; and Extra! publisher Deborah Thomas worked with him as publisher of the literary journal Grand Street. He will be missed.
FAIR gets up in arms when writers like Thomas Friedman, Ethan Bronner, and other folks have conflicts of interest and then expect newspapers to respond to their media alerts. That’s fine. Ironically the Village Voice fired Cockburn in 1984 for accepting $10,000 from the Institute for Arab Studies when he was a staff writer.
Like him or hate Cockburn, the Village Voice did the right thing. Alan Lupo of the Boston Phoenix did a tour de force on Cockburn’s journalistic malfeasance. Good luck defending Cockburn after you read Lupo’s piece from beginning to end.
I agree with Cockburn on a lot of things he’s written about, especially on the Middle East and his superb criticisms of the Sept. 11th Truth Movement. But if FAIR calls out writers/pundits for conflicts of interest they already disagree with politically (don’t tell me FAIR doesn’t represent a particular POV. That’s dishonest), then FAIR also should also go after the ones FAIR agrees with ideologically. That to me would be “Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting.” FAIR needs to be consistent, not just with those they don’t like.
From the article ctrenta would like us to read: “But to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), a pro-Israel group in Washington, and to the B’nai B’rith’s Anti-Defamation League (ADL), the Institute of Arab Studies is more than a cultural organization. To them, it is one of the many Arab propaganda organizations seeking to discredit Israel among Americans.” And if AIPAC says so, it must be true. Article also quotes the awesomely terrible writer David Denby denouncing Cockburn. The Boston Phoenix was a piece of shit paper back then for publishing this; how loathesome to dreg it up last week.
Read more: http://thephoenix.com/boston/news/141735-alexander-cockburns-s10000-arab-connection/#ixzz229G1C4Fc
This isn’t about AIPAC, Steve. This is about Alex Cockburn engaging in poor journalism practices. You don’t accept money on a project and not disclose it to your employer. That’s irresponsible as it is unprofessional.
I always enjoyed reading Cockburn’s writing because if there was a way to look at something from a different perspective, he would find it.
I didn’t even have to agree with what he wrote to enjoy reading it.
Man, I loved how he wrote, I loved when he got it wrong, (climate change, etc) He was a thinker and, unapologetically, a real lefty. Hell, he even attacked FAIR, unfairly many years ago, and his response was, effectively, keep on your toes people, no one gets a free ride. Hard to imagine I won’t be reading his stuff anymore. Really glad he started counterpunch.
@Rob Lipton: How did he get Climate change wrong? I was under the impression that he supported the science proving its existence. Don’t tell me you’re one of those radicals who’s still deluded into thinking that Climate Change isn’t a scientific fact, confirmed by 100% of the Climate scientists in the world (no, there are none that are saying it isn’t true; just 2% who haven’t also agreed that it’s been significantly aggravated by human action)
No, McBob, Rob isn’t one of those radicals, but Alex was. His work did leave me shaking my head more frequently over the last few years, but I still looked for it. No one is proposing canonization, but there was only one Alexander Cockburn. His passing leaves a hole that won’t be filled.
Few there are who will stand up to the Iron Curtain regarding Israel’s mistreatment of the Palestinians. Alex Coburn was one of the fearless, and certainly the most articulate. It’s all-to-common to hear that no one can replace a departed figure, but in the case of Alex Coburn and his deft pen, this is searingly true.–mk
I will miss the voice of Alexander Cockburn.
As Dan Coughlin once described him to me, he was an “unreconstructed” leftist. I first began reading his “Ashes & Diamonds” column in the LA Weekly somewhere around the mid 1980s. And then I found his “Beat the Devil” column in the Nation. Along the way, there were columns at the LA Times from time to time, and a great piece he wrote on Ian Fleming in 1987 to mark the release of The Living Daylights.
Cockburn had a great knack for tweaking everybody he could. He would challenge people on their assumptions and he clearly loved a good debate. His back-and-forths in the Nation letters pages were legendary. My favorite is one he wrote in the late 1980s as a broadside on James LeMoyne for writing a piece that presented the Nicaraguan Contras in a more flattering light than the reality would support. LeMoyne responded with an angry letter, and Cockburn responded in turn with a point-by-point rebuttal. Cockburn included a vicious shot noting that LeMoyne had been questioned by other reporters on the return plane ride and had thrown a tantrum at them, yelling “Just die! Die!” before burying himself in his notes again…
I’m not surprised that Cockburn was given a grant to write a book about the invasion of Lebanon, nor am I surprised that he didn’t disclose it to the Voice. From his point of view, the grant was for a separate research project, and I don’t believe this was the only time in his career that he accepted grant money before writing books. It doesn’t look very good, of course, but to my mind, it simply shows that he wasn’t a perfect person or even a perfect reporter. He made a mistake, and then had to give the money back. Not really a big deal, considering that it never affected the writing he was doing or changed his outlook. It would be a much bigger deal if he had been writing pro-Israel pieces and then suddenly changed course after getting the grant. But he didn’t. We should also keep in mind that Cockburn wasn’t exactly hurting for funds then, so this wasn’t a matter of him taking a huge payoff. I think he honestly thought he was getting funding to support a research trip. But you’re correct to note he should have disclosed it.
Of course, this doesn’t change the fact that in the wake of his death, we’ve heard from all the expected attackers. Various people have crawled out to write poison pen obits on him, including David Horowitz and Marc Cooper. The sad thing about this is that these guys are now saying things they would never have dared to say while he was alive. Cooper’s attack was particularly vicious, attempting to smear Cockburn about a past girlfriend and then trying to rewrite Cockburn’s history as some kind of failure.
Cockburn lived his life the way he chose to. He left the UK when he got fed up there and transferred here. He lived in the US for decades before finally deciding to become a US citizen only a few years ago. He wrote columns for multiple left wing publications over the years, the longest run being for The Nation. In the 70s and 80s, he was friends and colleagues with Cooper, Christopher Hitchens and many others who would later drift into liberalism or even conservatism. And where many of those writers sold out their initially good instincts to either be cozier with the establishment (Hitchens) or to plant their own vaguely liberal flag with the Democrats (Cooper, with his noxious radio edition of The Nation), Cockburn never changed course.
In his later years, I believe Cockburn, if anything, hardened his views about the nature of US policies and about politics in general. Since so many of his colleagues had essentially given up the fight, he doubled down – embracing a kind of libertarian anarchism, coupled with the same skepticism he’d always had toward mainstream publications and politicians. He chose to live in a simple way, in a small town in Northern California. He devoted much of his time to his own publication, Counterpunch, where he could make the editorial decisions rather than being subjected to someone else’s whims. He had contradictions. He made a big noise about not believing in Global Warming – much of which I believe was his way of being a contrarian with leftists who simply line up a series of causes to stand for without thinking them through. He enjoyed driving a gas guzzler and wrote essays about travelling around America finding good barbecue. He greatly enjoyed teasing Democrats – his essays about their presidential candidates were usually full of sarcastic body shots at whoever the Dems were running this year – and there was a serious undercurrent to them. Contrary to the opinions of Marc Cooper and other people throwing rocks at the casket, Cockburn never lost his edge or his perspective. His columns this year were just as effective and incisive as the first ones of his I read in the 1980s.
I will greatly miss being able to read his weekly column every Friday at Counterpunch, and I have to wonder if they will be able to find someone to take his place at the editorial reigns. Jeffrey St. Clair is a good writer, but Counterpunch was very much Cockburn’s baby. It’s hard to admit that time really is going on, but the death of people like Alexander Cockburn makes it impossible to deny.
I also enjoyed the punch of Cockburn’s articles, but came to the conclusion that he wasn’t a serious observer on many issues in his stubborn denial of global warming and its very probably human causes. He just ignored the science. He looked obstinately silly, and I became skeptical thereafter about much of what he wrote, although I still liked to read what he had to say about U.S. corruption, foreign policy, Israel-Palestine and other issues. In a sense he was a showman, and his vanity took too too strong a hold on his stated ideas.
Beat the Devil was always an amazing column at the Nation and my heart fell when it was cut back to a single page. Cockburn always challenged your thinking and I always felt more informed having read him, whether I agreed or whether I was upset by something he said. From a media analysis perspective, I think it is really telling how widely Christopher Hitchens was celebrated versus the silence that has largely greeted Cockurn’s passing frrom the elite media. It is not as though he was an unknown person… He had a long-running Wall Street Journal column, after all. What he never did was defect or sell out his positions.